


Why Daddy Shouldn't Marry Grandpa Bruce (by Lian Harper)

by atheniavenesia



Category: DCU, Green Arrow (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: (But Like Not Really) - Freeform, Awkward Conversations, Daddy Kink, F/M, Family Dinners, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Misunderstandings, Sexual Humor, a one sentence punchline that became a 6000 word story because i have poor impulse control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 11:14:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30004014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheniavenesia/pseuds/atheniavenesia
Summary: It was just dinner with family. A family large enough to be an independent militia, but that was all. Nothing serious.Lian disagreed.
Relationships: Background Dinah Lance/Oliver Queen, Past Kyle Rayner/Jason Todd, Roy Harper/Jason Todd, background Connor Hawke/Kyle Rayner
Comments: 22
Kudos: 125





	Why Daddy Shouldn't Marry Grandpa Bruce (by Lian Harper)

There was going to be a dinner party at Roy and Jason’s house. Roy knew this. He’d been the one to invite everybody. He’d also been the one convince Jason to allow him to invite them, but that didn’t fit on a card.

It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d been steadily working his way through a steak that’d been better than anything he’d eaten in his entire life, and it’d seemed the most natural thing in the world to want to show off his boyfriend’s cooking.

Mostly for two reasons.

Firstly, Roy wasn’t — though he’d never admit it — immune to those incredibly embarrassing masculine urges to show off the person he’d laid claim to. In his opinion, it was all a little too caveman for him to talk about in public company. ‘Me Roy. Me have man. Man make food. Ha.’

Humiliating? Yes.

An unwitting reinforcement of patriarchal ideas regarding anthropology? Sure.

So intriguing that it gave him a little bit of a boner? Take a fucking guess.

Secondly, he got an even more mortifying thrill about the invites. It was his name. And Jason’s. Right next to each other. He spent more time thinking about the typeface for it than some people spent on their wedding invites.

When he made that comparison, he’d spent two hours having sex with Jason until they were absolute, sweaty messes. Then he spent three hours having a panic attack about relationship timelines and the reality of commitment issues within the vigilante community. It was, shockingly enough, a weird complex.

But those two factors combined so that he’d had no option but to proclaim after every bite that, “seriously, Jaybird, you should have the whole family over. The way you cook, it’s criminal not to share.”

Roy said a lot of things, a lot of the time. It’d easy to ignore. Jason had been on his way to doing just that, in fact. He’d been halfway through rolling his eyes when Lian had piped up from where she was desperately trying to steal Roy’s knife so she could cut her steak into even smaller sections.

“That would be fun, Daddy,” she’d said. She’d even managed to bring her hands back to her own plate. She’d used them to shovel chunks of meat into her mouth, but fatherhood had long ago taught Roy the value of choosing his battles. “Can we? Please?”

And Roy’s thoughts had been, in order:

Oh, fuck.

This might actually be a good idea.

How bad would it be to enlist his daughter to emotionally blackmail his boyfriend?

The answer had been ‘very bad’, but that didn’t bother Roy much. Honestly, Jason had spent years systematically executing Gotham City criminals in order to create a thriving criminal empire, so bad was sort of relative with them. Also, Roy’d been working through those other two reasons and had found there wasn’t much rational thinking to be done in the face of them.

Jason had frozen at the question. He’d looked at Roy with something like panic in his eyes. Roy’d brought a bite of steak to his mouth and carefully chewed. Really, it’d been so fucking good. Absolutely no kissing until they brushed their teeth because of the cracked garlic, but sacrifices had needed to be made.

But he’d only swallowed and said, carefully, “I think you’re right, pumpkin. Can we, Jaybird?”

Jason had slumped his shoulders in betrayal. He was helpless in the face of Lian. No resistance he mounted could stand in the face of her pout. He hadn’t been around for her toddler years like Roy, so he was lacking the necessary exposure to inoculate him.

“Sure thing,” Jason had said. He’d fixed Roy with a glare that could have seared his bones. Roy’d only taken another bite of his food. “Anything for you, Li.”

Jason had been so mad that they hadn’t even had sex that night. Well, that wasn’t true, but Jason definitely hadn’t cuddled with him after. Okay, that was also a lie, but Jason waited until Roy brushed his teeth and then kissed him with disgusting garlic breath.

That was biological warfare. It absolutely didn’t matter that Roy had kissed back. He was a weak man in the face of such cruel tactics.

The invites, though, had been sent out. It’d all been very official, and not even Jason had been able to resist smiling when he’d seen them. He’d tried to turn it into a cough, but Roy hadn’t been fooled. It’d helped that he’d seen Jason tuck an extra one away in a scrapbook Roy had to pretend under pain of death to never know about.

On the day of the party, Roy woke to soft daylight streaming in through the windows and Jason resting all two-hundred-twenty pounds of him on Roy’s chest. Roy couldn’t breathe. Crushed by muscle man boyfriend wasn’t the worst way to go.

“Jaybird,” he wheezed anyways. He wanted to have sex with Jason one more time before he went out. Also Lian had a parent-teacher conference coming up that he absolutely couldn’t miss. Death would have to wait. “Babe, I need you to wake up.”

He trailed a hand down Jason’s back. Back before he’d moved in, Jason had slept naked. After he’d started living with a four-year-old, that’d rapidly changed. For the sake of his daughter’s continued innocence, he was grateful. He let his fingers trace over the waistband of Jason’s briefs. It was still a shame to miss out on that view.

“Come on,” Roy continued. He shifted so he could press his lips against Jason’s hair. He whispered into it. “If you get up now, we’ve got time for a quickie before everybody gets here.”

Jason shifted. He was most certainly awake. When one of those teal eyes cracked open, there was definitely amusement. Roy’d been hoping for lust, but he’d been told his humor was one of his most attractive qualities. He could work with this.

“Are you waking me up,” Jason said with the edge of his smirk still buried against his pillow, “so that you can get lucky before our families show up?”

Roy smiled and pulled him closer with the arm that wasn’t tangled up between their bodies. “Absolutely not. I’m waking you up so _we_ can get lucky before our families show up.”

“You’re a saint,” Jason said.

He shifted his hips so he could press his favorable opinion on the matter against Roy. Roy bit his lip and tried not to feel like a teenager getting ready for his first time. Jason had that effect on him.

“Just wait,” Roy began. Jason groaned and Roy continued over his protests with, “until I take you to heaven.”

Jason shook his head at it. His laugh was more of a rumble in the morning, and Roy knew he was grinning like a maniac at the sound. Jason propped himself up on one arm so he could look down at Roy.

“Does that work for you often?” Jason asked.

He was shaking his head, and it wasn’t doing any favors to the tangled mess of his hair in the mornings. Roy moved so he could trail his lips across the arm holding him up.

“Most of the time,” Roy said between kisses. “Must be my sheer animal magnetism.”

Jason’s fingers went to the waistband of Roy’s boxers. They played with the hair of his happy trail, and Roy tried not to jump on top of him. Slow. He could do this. He looked up and saw Jason’s smile had turned wicked.

“It has to be,” Jason said. The smile grew broader and Roy got the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to like the rest of that sentence. “It works on me, Daddy.”

Roy shuddered. “Dude.”

Jason laughed. “Not doing it for you?”

Roy rolled so he was on top of Jason, slotted in between his legs. The way his hands went to Jason’s wrists so he could pin them to the bed was all reflex.

“Lian calls me that,” he said. It was more of a whine, but he was entitled to it when the love of his life was ruining the mood. “Don’t do that when I’m putting the moves on you.”

Despite what he was saying, he hadn’t stopped his slow grind against Jason. It was remarkably hard to do, he’d found. Once, he’d missed check in with the Justice League because he was getting entirely too comfortable in a Watchtower storage closet with Jason. He’d almost started a galactic incident, and he’d definitely caused a vote on the improper usage of League clearance to get non-members on the Watchtower.

Jason had a blush starting to cover his face and his lips parted with every little exhale. Morning breath be damned, Roy leaned in for a kiss. It got heated enough that he had to pull away before he embarrassed himself. Jason licked his lips and got that devious smirk again.

“Getting a little too excited there, aren’t we?” he teased. Roy knew what was coming. He tried kissing him before he could finish it, but alas. He was only human, with regular human kiss speeds. “Better slow down, Daddy.”

Roy groaned. “You know, you keep calling me that and I’m going to assume you want to be put in time out.”

Jason laughed. He was awake enough now that it bounced off the walls. If it got joy painted across his face like that, Roy figured he could take a little teasing. Besides, he pulled Roy into another kiss without mention of the D-word. They were just starting to get into the swing of things when they heard the distinct sound of the door opening.

Roy fumbled, slipped, and banged his head against Jason’s mouth. Jason shouted, squeezed entirely too hard on a delicate piece of Roy’s anatomy, and brought a hand to his mouth. Lian poked her head in.

“What going on in here?” she asked.

She sounded deeply suspicious. Jason was still holding a hand to his mouth and glaring and Roy. Roy took it as his cue to speak.

“Nothing, pumpkin,” he said. He turned so he could see the top her head peeking around the door. He made double sure the blanket was bunched in his lap before he continued. “How about you just go back to your room, okay? Daddy and Jay will be there in a second.”

She didn’t move. She narrowed her eyes between Roy and Jason and he could see the gears turning in her head. Roy absolutely wasn’t ready to have permanently scarred his daughter’s young eyes. Eventually, though, she pursed her lips and slowly left the room.

“It’s already eight,” she said as she was leaving, “so you guys better wake up. Don’t be lazy and sleep in all weekend.”

Roy felt relief to the soles of his feet. The door closed and he collapsed to mattress. Jason finally brought his hand away from his mouth. His tongue was sticking out, and the tip was reddened.

“Theriouthly, Roy?” Jason asked.

Roy looked at the ceiling. “’Theriouthly’ yourself. My daughter’s telling me not to sleep in. I know that’s all your influence.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Jason said thickly. “You made me bite my tongue.”

Roy turned his head to look at Jason. The big, bad Red Hood was pouting. Roy had no idea why he loved him.

“Want me to kiss it better?” Roy asked with all fake-concern. He even managed a few wide-eyed blinks before he rolled his eyes. “You big baby. Let me see it.”

Jason brought his tongue back into his mouth so he could very carefully enunciate, “fuck off.”

He’d finally sat all the way up, and Roy had to follow suit so he could wrap his arms around Jason’s back. He ended up with his chin nestled in the junction between Jason’s shoulder and neck. He inhaled the scent of sleepy-Jason and yawned.

“Maybe we should pull Lian in here and try to get a little more sleep,” he said. Jason managed to give Roy a very unimpressed look despite the fact that he couldn’t see him at all. “Seriously, Jaybird, it’s not right to be up this early. It’s eight. In the morning.”

Jason huffed a laugh, but Roy only had a moment to bask in the heat of Jason fresh out of the blankets before he was very abruptly dropped on his face. He ended up with his tongue between his teeth and a very unflattering view of Jason rushing pull on a pair of sweatpants.

“My marinade!” he exclaimed. He tried to get in a teeshirt before writing it off as a lost cause and running out the door with his head halfway in the shirt and one arm hopelessly tangled in it. Roy distantly heard the sound of Jason’s elbow hitting a wall. “Fu—dge! My fudging elbow and my fudging marinade!”

Roy stuck his stinging tongue out of his mouth and clambered to his feet. There was no way he’d be able to get Lian back to sleep if Jason was going to be running around and shouting. Now he had to get up, too.

“Fudge off, Jathon,” he muttered.

* * *

Jason had moved on to the soup course — which seriously? A whole soup course? — when the first guest arrived. Roy’d been in the living room all day with Lian, so it took all of a knock-and-a-half for him to answer the door. Honestly, he was happy for the distraction. Lian had been giving him and Jason some very strange looks. Nobody under kindergarten age should be able to look that mistrustful.

When he pulled the door open, it was Dick and Tim. They were having some sort of whispered argument. Dick was so involved that he didn’t notice the door had opened. He knocked on the empty air a few times until Tim elbowed him.

“Hey, guys,” Roy said.

Dick stopped rubbing his side long enough to see Roy. His face immediately resolved into a smile. It was an instant transition.

“Roy, it’s good to see you,” Dick said. He pulled him into a one-armed hug.

Tim folded his arms across his chest. “Seriously? Just ask him. He’s right here.”

“I am,” Roy said after pulling himself out of the hug, “indeed right here.”

“Honestly, Tim,” Dick said with an exasperated sigh. He went back to smiling when he turned to Roy. There had to be a diagnosis for that sort of thing. “Quick question for you, if you don’t mind.”

Roy nodded slowly. “Shoot.”

Dick’s laugh was very loud and very fake. Roy didn’t mind that. You took a good audience where you could find it.

“’Shoot,’ that’s so funny,” he said around a smile that had turned a little manic. “Because you’re an archer. And you shoot. That’s so”—he cleared his throat—“anyways. What’s your opinion on nonalcoholic wine?”

Roy looked down to the bottle Dick was trying, very unsuccessfully, to hide behind his back with one hand. He caught Tim’s eye and got a solemn nod of solidarity. There was certainly something to be said about Dick’s enthusiasm, even if the execution was lacking.

“I love it,” Roy said.

He absolutely didn’t. He hadn’t been much a wine connoisseur before, and that definitely didn’t change on this side of sobriety. It was just funky-tasting grape juice with absolutely no benefit. He still smiled when he took the bottle from Dick.

“I told you, Tim,” Dick taunted him with.

He moved past Roy further into the apartment. He wisely chose to stay out of the kitchen and out of Jason’s way. He ended up balancing on the arm of the couch with one hand to Lian’s delight. This was going to be a disaster. Tim walked up and patted Roy’s arm.

“It’s only going to get worse,” he offered. His voice was dripping with sympathy. “Sucks to suck.”

* * *

As the day wore on, Roy found himself wondering just how Tim had gone so long without telling people he was a meta. He had to be. Every arrival brought some new form of torture.

Connor showed up with Kyle, blatantly disregarding the no-plus-ones-rule. And there was a reason for that. Counting just the family members that absolutely had to be there, there were fifteen people that needed to squeeze into the apartment.

Fifteen.

Roy wasn’t embarrassed of his lifestyle, but he had to be realistic. Their objectively kind-of-terrible two bedroom apartment didn’t have room for fifteen people in it. It definitely didn’t have room for sixteen people. Especially not if that sixteenth person might have slept with his boyfriend once.

He absolutely didn’t shake Kyle’s hand too hard. And if he did, he was entitled to it. It wasn’t like he could do anything else. They were all very proud of Connor for taking the momentous step of getting involved in a relationship and all sorts of things that basically gave Kyle diplomatic immunity in the Queen household. And, Roy had to admit through clenched teeth, the Harper household, too.

Then Damian got there with Alfred and decided to loudly decry Roy’s parenting skills based on Lian’s inability to perform killing blows with edged weapons. Which, first of all, how did he know that? Maybe his daughter was just playing the long game to lull him into a false sense of security before eliminating her only competition for baby of the family.

Secondly, _God_ , that kid was strange.

Duke and Stephanie showed up with Mia, then Roy got a call from Ollie that he and Dinah had been accosted in the street outside of his apartment by some blond terrorist that had abducted their daughter. Roy then had to mediate a completely inauthentic discussion during which Stephanie had to apologize for using flash bangs in public, Mia had to apologize for laughing and going with her, Duke had to apologize for allowing it, and Ollie had to apologize for… something. Existing. It didn’t matter.

And all of that was before it got weird.

By the time Bruce and Cass got there, Roy was at his wit’s end. He’d begun to regret not just initiating the idea, but also his general existence. He had two people in the bathroom, three in Lian’s room, six in the living room, and two that were, terrifyingly, completely unaccounted for.

When he heard that even knocking at the front door, he considered pretending he just wasn’t home. He only moved after the third set when Alfred starting getting up to answer it. Jason would kill him if he let Alfred do absolutely anything while he was here. He dragged himself to the door and pulled it open to find Bruce staring at his phone and Cass already pushing past him to get inside.

“Hi,” she said as she went. “Nice house.”

He gave her a weak wave as thanks. Bruce looked up from his phone.

“Harper,” he greeted.

“Your son calls me that,” he replied.

Bruce tried not to visibly recoil. “Roy’s fine, then.”

“He says that, too.”

Bruce was very good at looking like Batman without the suit. It was all very intimidating. ‘I am the night’ and all that. Unfortunately, Roy didn’t think a stay at Arkham sounded too bad after this.

“Excuse me, Daddy,” he heard from behind him.

He turned and saw Lian was standing behind him with her hands on her hips. She had a fiercely judgmental expression. He took a bemused step to the side at her urging.

Bruce deflated upon seeing her. He looked incredibly unsure of himself. Take that, Mr. Night. Lian took a step forward so she could look him up and down. Whatever it was she was looking for, Bruce was lacking. She shook her head a few times in abject disappointment. Then, she held her arms up.

“Um,” Bruce very intelligently said.

Lian huffed. “Pick me up now.” She rolled her eyes, then, “please.”

“Good job, pumpkin,” Roy said.

She gave him an absolutely withering look over her shoulder. Bruce, to his credit, followed her orders. Maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. By the time Lian was comfortably balanced on his hip, her dissatisfaction was palpable.

“You know,” she said, eyes blazing, “Jay always picks me up when I want it. I don’t even have to ask.”

Bruce’s face was all panic. Roy stared at Lian. What was happening here?

Bruce, paragon of conversation, said, “um.”

Roy ushered them in. Things didn’t get better after that. Lian was attached at the hip to Bruce. It was not, however, a very affirming experience for either of them. She spent every possible second critiquing his very existence and, when possible, comparing it to Jason.

It was incredibly strange. Lian liked Bruce. Not as much as she liked Dinah, but that wasn’t a fair comparison. She didn’t even like Roy as much as she like Dinah. This contentiousness was new. He hoped it wasn’t the precursor to a second wave of Terrible Twos.

Oliver found it incredibly funny. He almost couldn’t breathe between wheezing laughs. By the time he started adding on suggestions to Lian’s endless list of criticisms, Roy had begun to fear the likelihood of a fatal League mishap involving Ollie. When Bruce turned the Bat-Glare on Roy, he amended it to include both Arrows.

It was only until dinner. He repeated it like a mantra. He wasn’t quite as good at meditating as Connor, but he was rapidly reaching a zen state. This would all be over soon. All things are temporary. Suffering is transitory.

When Jason came around the corner of the kitchen with a pair of tongs clacking aggressively in his hands, Roy almost cried in relief. Jason gave a foreboding look around the living room.

“It’s done,” he announced.

Somebody laughed. Roy wasn’t sure of the identity, but it sounded like Stephanie.

“Nice apron,” came after, and that was definitely her.

Jason looked down. He was wearing the novelty apron Roy’d gotten him for Christmas. It had the pattern of a dress and tasteful amount of cleavage printed on it. Jason went fluorescent. He pulled it over his head and threw it somewhere behind him.

Roy didn’t have the heart to tell him that it wasn’t much better. His shirt was still inside-out from that morning. And, somehow, backwards. Roy bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Jason’s expression of utter betrayal proved he wasn’t fooled.

After that, things proceeded more or less smoothly until it came time for seating arrangements. There weren’t enough seats in the kitchen for everybody, and that was only the beginning of the issue. They ended up separating everybody into kids and adults. Adults ate in the living room, and kids ate in the kitchen.

The kids were decided as Mia, Tim, Duke, Damian, and Lian. Half of them took it with dignity, but half were furious about the ordeal. By the time they were settled with their roles, Lian had demanded that she be allowed to sit with the adults since it was her house. That’d started another fifteen minute argument.

Impossibly, things were even more complicated on the adults’ end. Kyle wanted to sit next to Connor, who didn’t want to be too near the meat dishes. Stephanie wanted to sit next to both Kyle and Dinah. Dinah didn’t have any preferences, but Ollie wanted to be next to her. Cass wanted to be next to Steph, who gave up a claim on Kyle to make it happen. Dick wanted to sit next to Roy, but Lian and Jason were supposed to be on either side of him. He accepted defeat and decided on sitting next to Jason. Bruce and Ollie wouldn’t even look at each other, which ended up pushing them to either end of the room.

They eventually settled it and sat down in the living room to eat. There were people on the couch, the floor, and leaning against the entertainment center. Lian took one look at the whole thing and demanded they all switch so she could be between Roy and Bruce. At that point, everybody was hungry enough that they didn’t put up much of a fight. Cass got frustrated with the whole thing and moved to the kids’ table. He didn’t blame her.

Finally, _finally_ , it was time to eat. At first there was nothing but the sound of silverware. Well, plasticware. Roy wasn’t doing dishes for the small army in his apartment. Some light conversation followed, mostly compliments about the food. Jason really had outdone himself. Jason pretended not to preen, and Roy pretended not to preen at Jason pretending not to preen. It was going great. Then Lian decided she was thirsty.

“Can I have some juice?” she asked.

And normally the answer would have been no. Most of the time, it was water with dinner. However, Dinah had opened the nonalcoholic wine and several people were pretending to enjoy it. Roy hated for her to feel left out. Jason apparently came to the same conclusion. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and gave her a soft smile.

“Sure thing, Li,” he offered.

He was most of the way to getting up when Lian shook her head adamantly. She crossed her arms over her chest and started glowering at the floor.

“You can’t get it,” she said.

She sounded… actually really upset. Roy moved his dish aside so he could rub her back.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he whispered.

She looked up at him furiously. Her eyes were suspiciously shiny.

“Nothing’s wrong!” she shouted. She put her dish down and stormed to her feet. “It doesn’t matter. Bruce has to get the juice now!”

A bite of Bruce’s food fell out of his mouth with how quick he got to his feet. “Uh, okay?”

Lian glared at him. She was so mad that she was starting to turn red. “It’s not okay! Jay would have already got it!”

At this point, everybody was staring. Even Damian had stopped talking about optimal decapitation techniques to gross out Mia and Duke. Tim and Cass seemed largely immune to that. Roy was lost. Jason met his eyes and Roy could see he wasn’t alone in that.

“Hey, baby girl,” Jason said. He got up from his food to pull her into a hug. “It’s okay. Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it. I can get you your juice if you want.”

Lian clung to him and started crying. Roy jumped to his feet and hovered on the outside of the hug for a minute. He held his hands up helplessly. Even Dick was leaning a little closer. He’d always been utterly helpless against kids crying.

When Roy tried to get closer to add himself to the hug, though, Lian turned away from Jason so she could bat his hands away. Roy pulled back. Okay, that hurt. Emotionally, but also kind of physically. She was a strong kid.

“Leave me alone,” she said. Her face was the picture of misery. “This is all your fault.”

“My…” Roy trailed off.

Dinah saw the direction things were headed. Roy kept looking between Jason and Lian like he was missing something.

“Hey, kiddo,” Dinah soothed as she approached. She crouched down to be at Lian’s level. “Why don’t you try telling me what’s wrong?”

Lian flung herself into Dinah’s arms. Dinah took it like a champ and started smoothing a hand over her head. Roy was starting to feel a little upset, too. Lian managed to get talking.

“I don’t want Grandpa Bruce to be my dad,” she sobbed. “I want it to be Jay.”

They all turned to look at Bruce. He was currently choking on a piece of food. Kyle managed a half-hearted slap on the back to dislodge it. It didn’t do anything to assuage the panic in his eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“What?” Jason echoed.

“What?” Roy added.

They all turned to at Lian. She sniffled into Dinah, and Roy totally owed her for getting his kid’s snot in her hair, before she turned that angry expression to Roy. Her face was blotchy and miserable, but she still managed to look furious. She had to get that from her mom.

“I know that you’re going to marry Grandpa Bruce and I don’t want you to!” she yelled.

Bruce and Roy looked at each other. They shuddered. Ollie cut in.

“Hold on,” he said. He was the picture of peace, except for the faint green tinge at imagining Roy and Bruce getting married. That was all the family resemblance he and Roy needed for the moment. “Li-Li, why would you think that?”

“Because kids get a new dad if their dad gets married to somebody else,” Lian said.

Roy had told her that. He absolutely wouldn’t admit it was because he’d been thinking about an engagement ring for Jason, but that was neither here nor there. Roy furrowed his brows.

“What does that have to do with Bruce?” he asked.

“I heard you this morning,” Lian hissed at him.

Roy’s eyes went wide.

“Oh, baby—” Jason started.

“Pumpkin, that’s not—” Roy said at the same time.

Lian stomped her foot and shouted over both of them. “I know you and Grandpa Bruce are getting married because you’re Jay’s daddy now! He said!”

Roy felt the world spin dangerously around him. Oh, no.

Oh, _no_.

Jason’s hands went slack by his side. For the first time, he and Jason were the exact same shade of pale. They locked eyes. This was going to be bad.

Mia was the first person to start laughing. She almost tied with Stephanie. Dick valiantly tried to hide his cackling behind a hand, but it didn’t last long. Kyle laughed so hard he had to put his head between his knees, and Conner rubbed his back soothingly between chuckles of his own. Cass only looked between everybody owlishly.

Tim snorted, and Damian was so disgusted by everything else happening that he only barely made fun of him for it. Dinah bit her lips so her only laughter was in the way her eyes sparkled. Even Alfred tried to pass his off as a cough. Bruce and Ollie locked eyes. For the first time, Roy saw them come to silent understanding. Their matching grimaces said they were never going to talk about this again.

“Why’s everybody laughing?” Lian asked. She’d lost some of her steam at the unexpected reaction, but Roy could see her building back up. “What’s so funny?”

Roy went to one knee. He held his arms out to her for a hug. Apparently, she was more upset at the situation than at him, because she threw herself into it.

“Lian,” Roy said, and he was really going to have this conversation. There was no way out of this. He sighed. Might as well bite the bullet. “That’s not what was happening.”

Jason jumped in. He was even redder now than he’d been when the family had seen him with the apron on.

“That was just—”he swallowed audibly—“a game.”

“What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.

Roy cleared his throat. “Like playing pretend.”

Dick wheezed and Bruce swayed where he was sitting. Jason looked ready to combust.

“But not like that!” he desperately added. He couldn’t look away from his feet, but it was clear that this part was for their audience. “I was not pretending Roy was Bruce. That’s—eww.”

Finally, somebody took pity on them. Alfred stood from his seat and fixed the edges of his mustache. He gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Allow me to take over,” he said. He offered a hand to Lian. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Bruce cleared his throat. Ollie cycled through delight at seeing Bruce uncomfortable, curiosity at what Alfred was talking about, and horror at the situation that’d prompted it. He settled for clearing his own throat. Lian took Alfred’s hand, but stopped to look at Roy and Jason.

“You’re not getting married to anybody else?” she asked.

Her voice was small. Roy wanted to sink into the earth and die, but he couldn’t be mad at her. He sighed.

“Of course not, pumpkin,” he said.

He gave her a small smile, and she returned it with an unsure one of her own. Alfred shook his head at the two of them and gently led her to her bedroom. As soon as the door closed behind them, the laughter started up again. Jason met Roy’s eyes. Beneath the mortification, there was a bit of fondness.

It was a ridiculous family, but it was theirs. Lian loved Jason just as much as Roy did, and the feeling was mutual. Everybody in the house had come to this stupid get-together. Roy shook his head with a fond grin. It would pass. Lian and Alfred returned with his daughter looking a little bashful at the scene she’d caused.

She gave Roy a hug around the leg and then looked up at him with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry for being silly.”

“It’s no problem, princess,” he replied.

She nodded slowly. “And next time you guys play house, can I play, too?”

Roy choked and Alfred arched a brow at him. Kyle doubled over again.

“Sure thing,” he managed.

She smiled at him and things mostly settled down. The rest of the meal went okay, even when Dick said to Roy very politely that he, “needs some salt, Daddy.” Jason had walked it over to him and shoved the shaker in his face. His smile was cocky.

“It’s my dinner,” he said easily. He leaned closer so he could growl, “that means that I’m your Daddy.”

Dick blanched and Tim snorted again. Things really were back to normal. The food helped. By the time the day came to an end, Roy was mostly concerned with his stomach exploding.

Bruce, Alfred, and Damian were the first to go. Alfred had nothing but compliments about the food and even Damian was less caustic than usual. Bruce didn’t have much of anything to say. He wouldn’t even look at Roy. That was fine by him, especially considering the feeling was mutual. He gave a gruff goodbye to Jason, an incredibly awkward handshake to Roy, and a tentative hug to Lian.

Ollie, Dinah, and Mia were the next to go. Dinah asked for the recipe for the banana bread Jason had made for dessert. He promised to give it to her, and she tweaked his nose as thanks. He let her get away with it, too. It helped that she was strong enough to eviscerate him. Mia was balancing three plates in her arms, and spared them only a nod before she was heading to the car. Ollie grimaced at Roy and Jason. He went with her.

The mood of the night changed once the father figures were gone, and things got a little more casual. It was friends. Mostly. Roy couldn’t help glaring at Kyle. If he put a possessive hand on Jason, too, what of it? Jason tolerated it with more grace than usual. Lian tried staying awake with them, and Roy indulged her. No point in putting her to bed on a Saturday night. Besides, she’d had quite the day.

When she fell asleep thirty minutes past bedtime, he carried her to her room so she could get some actual rest. She didn’t wake up, but she did cling to his shirt a little tighter in her sleep. He disentangled her fingers and ran a hand over her hair. He gave her a fond smile and a kiss on the forehead.

“Love you, pumpkin,” he whispered.

When he came back out, Tim, Steph, Duke, and Cass had all left together. Dick said they’d wanted to get some patrolling done. Eventually, that was the same excuse he gave. He bowed out with a minimum of teasing. He wrapped Jason and Roy into a big hug, told them to give Lian a kiss for him, and then did a triple somersault out the window. Roy shook his head as he watched him go.

That left Connor and Kyle. Connor, he liked. Kyle… unfortunately wasn’t bad. He was actually kind of cool, in a weird, Green Lantern way. The two of them stuck around for a while longer until Conner was leaning against Kyle and yawning every few minutes. Kyle gave him a look that was unbearably fond.

“I think we need to head out,” he laughed.

Connor leaned more heavily. “What gives you that idea?”

Roy hugged Connor and then walked over to give Kyle another too-hard handshake. While Jason was occupied with his goodbyes to Connor, Roy leaned in so he could talk right into Kyle's ear.

“Listen, buddy,” he muttered. “That’s my super-sexy, meal-making machine. Find your own.”

Kyle laughed again and pulled Roy into a hug. “Already did,” he whispered back.

He slapped Roy on the ass when they parted, and Jason narrowed his eyes at the two of them. When Kyle finally powered up the ring to fly him and Connor home, Jason had a firm handful of said ass and was gripping it very possessively. Roy's smile was a little goofy when he waved goodbye to them. Yeah, Kyle wasn’t so bad.

Eventually, it was just the two of them and a mountain of pots and pans. Jason yawned and scratched his head. Roy plastered himself to Jason’s back and squeezed.

“Dishes tomorrow?” he asked.

Jason nodded. “Tomorrow.”

They went back to their bedroom and Roy stripped to his underwear so he could dive into the bed. It wasn’t necessarily cold yet, but Roy didn’t have much tolerance for it. He preferred staying as toasty as possible. It was probably half the reason he was dating Jason, the human space heater. He peeked over the top of the blanket to see Jason had also stripped down to his underwear and was looking at Roy with a soft expression.

“I love you,” Jason said with that sappy smile on his face.

Roy grinned. “I know it, hot stuff.”

Jason laughed and crawled into bed. He stayed over the blankets, but fit himself between Roy’s legs. It was a reversal of the position they’d been in this morning. Jason leaned down to kiss him. His smile when he pulled back told Roy that he remembered it, too.

“So,” Jason said, “quite the day.”

Roy bent his legs a bit, brought his arms up so he could lace his fingers behind Jason’s neck. His smile felt easy on his face.

“Definitely,” Roy replied. “I especially liked eating _your_ dinner, Daddy.”

“Fuck off,” Jason laughed.

He bent to kiss Roy again, and they managed to finish what they’d started that morning. It definitely helped when they quit calling each other ‘daddy’ and stopping to laugh. Just as he’d thought earlier, it was more of a mutual getting lucky. Not that he was bragging or anything.

After, he was sprawled across Jason’s chest and knew their positions would be switched again in the morning. Jason always ended up tucked against him in the night. It made Roy’s chest warm to think about.

“Love you,” he mumbled as it occurred to him.

He was mostly asleep by then, but he still caught Jason’s huff of laughter. There was a little shift, then a sleepy voice against his ear.

“I know it, hot stuff.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed ! I love reading your comments, and kudos are always appreciated. Thanks !


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